Php vs jsp for a web designer?

Ok, i have read many answers and i hope some might help out.





Am a web-based designer for an enterprise and i started to do some freelance jobs, mainly for small companies OR individuals, i had to, for a certain website, to ask for the help of a programmer to develop a form based page with database integration, having said that, my interest is to learn some web-programming and scripting to aid in such small freelance projects, instead of getting the aid of a programmer.





So, we used .JSP with MySQL database, and that was a pain, since not so many web hosts include support for .JSP, and when they do, its costy (and doesnt work, had to move between 4 hosts :|).





My Question is: should i learn PHP OR JSP, for some basic to intermediate web development, nothing fancy, just to get me going. i would appreciate any input. Many thanks for anyone who answerers...
Php vs jsp for a web designer?
Go with PHP. It's a much better choice for a freelance programmer, and you will learn it easier. JSP is great if you want to learn application server programming in J2EE and already know some Java/C++, but since these are usually full-time programming roles, not contracting roles, you would be better off with PHP. This has a large part to do with the fact that J2EE app servers are usually run by the business, whereas a PHP website is a lot more flexible in terms of web hosting.





Both languages have decent IDEs (Dev-PHP, NetBeans %26amp; Eclipse) and support in most programmer's text editors (EditPlus, PSPad), so that factor is really a moot point, however I will say setting up a J2EE server (eg Tomcat) is a damnsite harder than setting up an Apache server with PHP (which is the major influence on web host support for JSP vs PHP).
Php vs jsp for a web designer?
I have always like doing PHP more than jsp, not only do I think its a bit less hassle, its also faster.
Reply:In my opinion if you want to do freelancing you should definately switch to PHP. Its fast, has an enormous amount of application and scripts available on the internet, hosting is cheap and there is more freelance work in PHP than any other language.





Also Dreamweaver is just fine for PHP development. Infact I have been using Dreamweaver for the past 3 years. Its excellent. But I might also recommend Eclipse, don't worry its free.
Reply:JSP is nice for somethings BUT, the problem really is support, if you want to find a good host or become a host, then JSP offers you all the power of java, but if you don't know java, I don't see how that's helpful. Apache has a tomcat server that supports JSPs out of the "box" http://tomcat.apache.com








People like PHP, that's not really a technical argument, but you can easily get hosting for it, it's probably about the same level of powerful, and when you finish a job or die, there will be someone that can update it. Whether that's an advantage or not...really is in what you want to do in the end. That is to say there are more PHP programmers than JSP programmers.





JSP does have a free IDE that I'm aware of called "NetBeans" with color coding and syntax checking and it automatically finds the Java stuff it needs during install.





PHP I'm sure also has IDEs, but I'm not aware of any off the top of my head.